


The Element of Water

by cest_what



Category: Tensou Sentai Goseiger
Genre: M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-17 05:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2298173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cest_what/pseuds/cest_what
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Does Agri know how to swim?” Alata asked, his brow furrowing.</i> </p><p>
  <i>Moune bit her lip more fiercely. “It’s not that he doesn’t know how,” she said.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Element of Water

**Author's Note:**

> Mention of the character introduced in Episode 10, but no particular spoilers. Set during the Yuumajuu arc.
> 
> Apologies if Agri's attitude to swimming is contradicted somewhere in canon; I couldn't remember if it had ever come up.

It only happened because this Yuumajuu was the kind who liked to save her greatest sting for her tail. 

She was pulling back, clearly preparing to retreat and regroup, but at the last moment she shifted direction and swooped directly for Agri. Her studded truncheon slammed into his torso as she hurtled past and into the sky, flinging him backwards through the air.

The cliff edge was too close behind him already. Hyde’s cry of “Agri!” was overtaken by Moune’s of “Oniichan!”, and then they were all rushing forwards to the edge.

Agri’s wings snapped out, white against the sky, but he seemed to be too winded to beat them properly. They folded around his body and he tumbled as he fell, flapped once, tumbled again, then hit the blue surf below.

Hyde did a quick scan to make sure the Yuumajuu had truly retreated after her final attack, transforming out of his fight suit only when he was sure. Then he turned and leaned out over the edge again.

There was no reason for Agri to not be all right. It was a long fall, but Agri had managed enough lift with his wings that he hadn’t hit the water at freefall speed, and the bottom of the cliff was clear deep water, with a gentle sand beach a little further down. Agri only had to swim towards that. Hyde couldn’t spot him, though.

Moune had let her battle form go too. She was chewing her lip, worried. “Ah!” she said suddenly. “I see him!”

Hyde spotted him a moment later. Agri had transformed out of his own fight suit, deliberately or by accident, his hair plastering itself to his head as he broke the surface. It looked like he was flailing about in the water, though, and his head kept going under again.

“Does Agri know how to swim?” Alata asked, his brow furrowing.

Moune bit her lip more fiercely. “It’s not that he doesn’t know how,” she said. “It’s only that when he doesn’t have time to prepare, sometimes he …”

Hyde didn’t wait to hear any more. He pushed off from the cliff edge, the dive clean and controlled. 

Sea winds buffeted at him, but the ocean spray carried on the air allowed him to slice smoothly through. The water welcomed him when he hit the surface, slipping under and arrowing into the green.

He flipped and pushed up again immediately, breaking into the air.

“Agri!”

“H–Hyde!” Agri’s voice carried over the break and lilt of the water all around, and the rowdier sounds of gulls. Hyde located him just in time to see his head go below the waves again. Hyde struck out towards him.

Moune had been right, he realised when he got closer. The problem wasn’t that Agri didn’t know how to swim. The problem was his _wings_.

Agri was going under because his wings kept slipping into the physical plane. They were waterlogged, weighing him down, upsetting his balance and preventing him from finding a rhythm as he tried to tread water. Hyde stared as Agri’s wings flickered out of sight once more and he plunged under the water, bowled over by his own attempts to compensate for the weight of wings that weren’t currently there. A moment later the wings manifested again, rocking him sideways as the flat of one caught a wave.

Agri met Hyde’s stare, his expression slightly desperate, then his head went under yet again.

Hyde pushed himself into action, diving after him.

Agri’s wings were manifesting again, still translucent in the water but shifting quickly to real. Hyde could see that he was trying to pull them against his body and reduce the drag. Hyde ducked underneath one wing and tucked his hands under Agri’s arms. Then he pulled Agri against his own body, kicking them both to the surface.

A moment later Agri was gasping and coughing against Hyde’s ear. His wing was pressing against Hyde’s jaw, water streaming from the feathers.

“What are you doing?” Hyde asked. “Put your wings away, they’re getting in the way.”

Agri coughed, spitting out water, and laughed. “I’m not doing it on purpose,” he said. “I’m just … out of my element. Sometimes I don’t deal with it well, if I’m taken, um, off-guard.” He sounded frustrated.

There didn’t seem to be a solution to Agri feeling out of his element, other than to return him to land, so Hyde pulled Agri’s arm across his own shoulders and pushed towards shore.

He could feel Agri trying to stabilise his own breathing and reach equilibrium again, but his wings still shivered in and out of the physical plane as they swam, making both of them lurch in the water despite Hyde’s best efforts. The sandbar was a brighter blue strip just ahead, though, the shallower water gleaming aquamarine.

“Put your feet down,” Hyde told Agri after a minute.

Agri obeyed, his arm tightening around Hyde’s neck. He gave a sigh. The line of his body relaxed along the length of Hyde’s, and he stepped away.

They waded to shore together.

While Agri was catching his breath, doubled over with his hands on his knees, Hyde pulled out his communicator to call the others.

“Oniichan! Are you all right?” Moune’s voice came through immediately, even though Hyde had called Alata.

“Everything’s fine,” Hyde said.

“Well, we knew Hyde wouldn’t let Agri sink,” Eri said. Apparently Alata had lost possession of his communicator entirely.

Agri straightened up, jerking his chin at Hyde with a crooked smile. “That’s right, there’s no way this guy would let me drown,” he called, so they could hear.

“We’ll return as soon as we’ve dried off a little,” Hyde said in conclusion. “Call us if there’s any sign of the Yuumajuu, though.”

He finished the call and turned back to Agri. 

Agri had shaken his wings out, droplets of water flying. “Ah, this is bad,” he said. “They’re going to take forever to dry.” 

He settled on a rock and let them fan out around him in the sunshine, dropping his chin in his hands.

Hyde couldn’t help watching him. Wings weren’t private, exactly, but they were … special. Not for normal use. Before today, Hyde had only seen Agri’s in the moments before battle, and a few times around the house: mostly glimpses in the morning when Hyde happened to look out of a window to see him warming up for training in the courtyard below, wings snapping open briefly as he lifted his face to the early morning sun; or at night as everyone got ready for bed, the bathroom door half open as Agri shook out a wing and ran an absent hand over the longer flight feathers while he was brushing his teeth.

Hyde hadn’t seen Agri’s wings at rest this way, before. They were beautiful, even bedraggled and spread out to dry. The downy feathers had darkened from white to grey where water clumped them together, but the flight feathers held beaded droplets of water that sparkled in the sunshine.

Hyde could see that there were places where gritty sand had stiffened the feathers too, and where flecks of seaweed had got caught beneath.

He looked back to Agri’s face to find Agri regarding him a little curiously, his head tilted to the side.

Hyde hesitated. “Shall I help you brush your wings?” he asked. “They would dry more efficiently.”

Agri’s eyes widened. He turned to crane back over his shoulder. “Oh, they are a bit of a mess,” he agreed, dismayed. “If you … would you mind that?”

Hyde had done this a couple of times for Magis. It was something usually reserved for comrades in the aftermath of air battles, or for family members. The other Goseiger were Hyde’s family now, though, and they were comrades as important as Magis had been. 

Agri sat up straighter, shaking his wings to fling off as much of the remaining water as he could. Then he stilled them against his back, politely, so that Hyde could step in behind him.

Hyde started at the downy feathers near Agri’s shoulder, brushing his fingertips lightly back and forth to loosen the gritty sand that had clumped there. Then he used the flat of his hand to remove as much water as he could, making sure not to push the feathers against the grain.

“Oh, you’re good at this,” Agri said. “The couple of times I’ve had to ask Moune, she always got impatient and started combing the wrong way.” 

“Method is important,” Hyde said, moving down to the covert feathers. “Wings may be principally a part of our spiritual forms, but that makes caring for their physical element even more important.”

Agri laughed, a contented sound that made a tremor go through his wings. “Well, she does it to herself too,” he said. “You should hear her yelp in the mornings when she tries to brush her hair from the top instead of the ends because she wants to start breakfast already.”

Hyde had heard her, in fact; he’d heard everyone’s morning rituals, over the time they’d lived together in the Professor’s house. He was struck by a fierce gratitude, to realise how close he had become to all of them. How much he’d been let into their easy domestic circle, despite the fact that none of them had needed him there: Agri and Moune, Eri and Alata, Nozomu and the Professor; they’d all been complete in themselves, without any need for Hyde.

Hyde scraped his fingernails carefully between the covert feathers on Agri’s other wing, straightening feathers and flicking away stray pieces of seaweed, before turning his palm to the flat to brush away the remaining water droplets.

He wasn’t using any Tensou techniques – it wouldn’t be polite to use them on somebody else’s wings – but the water came away easily at the touch of his hands anyway, simply because of who he was. Agri’s wings were already shining brighter and warmer, the downy feathers fluffing up and the longer ones gleaming white in the sunlight.

Agri shivered as Hyde ran his fingers over the transition between coverts and flight feathers.

“Are you cold?” Hyde asked, frowning. His own hair and clothes were largely dry by now, warmed by the sun, but Agri must have been far more chilled.

“Hm?” Agri asked. He tilted his head back, regarding Hyde. “Mm, no.” He smiled and stretched, his wings shifting under Hyde’s hands. “I mean, I was, but I think they’re mostly dry now. It’s nice. Thank you.”

Hyde ducked his head. He concentrated on smoothing down a flight feather that had been pushed askew by the tiny strand of seaweed tangled about it. Agri’s smile had the effect it always did, infusing Hyde with a feeling of warmth and buoyancy.

He finished brushing down the tips of Agri’s wings. Last, he ran a careful finger down the line of one wing and then the other, feathers rustling under his touch, checking for anything he’d missed.

“There,” Hyde said. “You’re right, they’re nearly dry.”

Agri pulled his wings in towards his body, lifting them a little as he stood and turned. Then he folded them around, the feathers brushing Hyde’s shoulders in a soft, startling touch as, for a moment, they were both enclosed by Agri’s wings. Agri set a foot on the rock he’d been sitting on and leaned up, inside the white-shadowed space created by his wings. He pressed a swift kiss to Hyde’s mouth.

Then he was stepping back, letting the wings go in a dazzle of light, leaving him in just his regular clothing of windbreaker and black jeans in the sunshine.

Hyde stared. “You …” he said, touching his own mouth.

Agri palmed the back of his neck, looking away. “That was just … I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.” Then he smiled bright and self-deprecating, lifting his head to look at Hyde straight on. “You don’t have to do anything, I won’t be any different. That was a thank you.” 

Agri clapped his hands, turning to the cliff face. “All right,” he said. “We need to scale this!”

Hyde was trembling. His stomach churned, sick and nervous. He swallowed hard, and again, then stepped forward.

“Agri.”

Agri turned to look over his shoulder.

Hyde couldn’t think of the words, so he stepped up behind Agri, put a finger under his chin to tilt his head up, leaned down and kissed him.

Agri made a soft, startled sound. His body was pressed against Hyde’s, his back stretched in a clean twist as he leaned up into the kiss for a long and heart-stopping moment. Then he turned, his hands coming up to Hyde’s cheeks, and pressed their foreheads together.

His expression was radiant. “Trust a Seaick to need a moment to think things through, I guess,” Agri said.

Hyde's own smile was still crooked with disbelief. “Trust a Landick to be the first to rush in.”

Agri shook his head, stepping back. He grabbed Hyde’s hand and started tugging him towards the cliff.

“Not even slightly,” Agri said. “Didn’t I say?” He looked over his shoulder, and the gladness in his grin almost made Hyde trip over his own feet. “I told you, I’ve wanted to do that for ages."


End file.
